


We Walk Our Days on a Wire

by blackice



Series: Cleansing the Commonwealth [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Gen, More like off-screen crushes, Off-screen Relationship(s), Piper that's gay, not a good fic for bos-lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:33:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackice/pseuds/blackice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Diamond City’s only investigative journalist, Piper finds herself unusually hesitant about writing her next piece. On one hand, her little home loves Nora and her exploits, be it with their resident synth detective, the Commonwealth’s dog, or even an ex-Gunner mercenary (Piper toys with turning the last into a romance serial for the hell of it) and Nora’s adventures bring in caps. On the other hand, Piper doesn’t like shiny golden heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Walk Our Days on a Wire

**Author's Note:**

> The titles for 'Cleansing the Commonwealth' are all from Hozier songs, which really says a lot about my influences in writing.

I.

As Diamond City’s only investigative journalist, Piper finds herself unusually hesitant about writing her next piece. On one hand, her little home loves Nora and her exploits, be it with their resident synth detective, the Commonwealth’s dog, or even an ex-Gunner mercenary (Piper toys with turning the last into a romance serial for the hell of it) and Nora’s adventures bring in caps. On the other hand, Piper doesn’t like shiny golden heroes.

Gilded heroes, more like. There’s always _something_ wrong, she’s learned. There’s always a fatal flaw that reveals a dark and foreboding past, a terrifying overlord complex, whatever.

But because caps are necessary to purchase clothes and feed an ever voracious Nat, Piper obligingly churns out tale after tale of Nora’s adventures. She competes with Travis’s improved oratorical skills—another thing attributed to Nora, Diamond City’s Lady and Savior—but Piper still has the superior balls in terms of venturing out of the walls and getting the scoop first.

Travis may have gone out of his way to save Vadim from a two-bit gang, but Piper has occasionally faced down entire encampments of raiders on her trips with Nora. Comes with being an investigative journalist, the ever-present threat of your partner tripping every alarm system in the Commonwealth.

Anyway, something bad is bound to happen due to Nora’s influence, and by God, Piper will be there to witness, record, and print it. For now… Piper reluctantly pulls up a new log on the terminal’s screen and titles it ‘THE VERDANT WALL, RENEWED’.

II.

Piper barely hears the polite knock on the door. Rain drums the tin roof, the sound mind-numbing when combined with the clacking of her keyboard. The knock repeats, a little firmer this time. She gives in to holding a petty argument with Nat, citing previous evidence of good older sisterly-ness, before finally bellowing ‘OPEN THE DOOR, NATTY’.

Sulkily, Nat obeys; Piper gets peace with the drumming rain and noisy keyboard for all of two minutes.

A wet sodden hand pokes her shoulder, and Piper recoils from the chill with a yelp and reflexive fumble for her pistol. Then she squints up and sees the downtrodden face of Nick Valentine’s most-enduring assistant, Ellie Perkins. At Nat’s aghast expression, Piper sheepishly switches from reaching for her firearm to grabbing a pen.

She looks back at Ellie. “Is Valentine okay?” Her eyes narrow when Ellie fails to answer with anything but a seized cough. “He hasn’t gone and gotten stuck in someone’s Vault again, has he?”

Ellie Perkins, known to all of Diamond City for possessing an indomitable soul, crumbles. “Nick—Nick is—I think, I think he’s really gone this time.”

A fairly unnerving declaration, especially when made by a trusty source on Nick Valentine. Try as Piper might, though, she can’t recall a single time when Ellie had really broken down. Not when she got the news of a dear friend in Goodneighbor being stabbed, not when she got news of her last living parent succumbing to a nasty flu.

Piper saves her recent work, shuts down her terminal, and stands. “… Okay, I think we need a drink.” Her underage sister perks up, eyes threatening to go into a puppy-like status. “A _hot_ drink,” she stresses. “And a sit-down.” Leading Ellie down the stairs, Piper subtly jerks her head at Nat. _Back-up shoulder to cry on required_.

She guides the other woman onto a couch and sits beside her. “Start from where you last saw Nick.”

At the end of the story, pockmarked with plot-holes, Piper feels nausea curling her stomach. So Diamond City’s lost a good man, and their heads are so stuck far up their asses, she bets that Nick’s less-patient clients are cursing his tardiness.

Nat looks confused—she walked halfway in the story with a tray of ersatz coffee, but like a true little sister, had gamely taken Ellie’s other side.

Ellie looks weary, like she’s already told the story of Nick’s disappearance. A most likely permanent situation. Shit. She’s never been great at writing obituaries, she breaks down at every damn one. “Who else have you told?” she demands, because she has had an epiphany. The kind of epiphany that threatens to elude you forevermore because it’s so ludicrous, you can’t help but dismiss it…

(Fortunately, Piper excels at trapping these epiphanies.)

Nick Valentine is rarely caught off-guard, even around people who he thinks are trustworthy (a very small ring of people). So it has to be someone he would die for, not just out of his stupid chivalrous heart, but because he wouldn’t be able to think of life without them. That too is a very, very small ring of people. Two people, in fact.

Ellie sits next to her. Nora travels the Commonwealth without a synth detective to cover her alibi.

And there had been an anonymous tip weeks ago, about Nora not being who she really was. Why had she brushed it off back then?

“I—“ Startled by the clipped tone, Ellie stammers. “I went to Goodneighbor after Nick had gone without any alarm being raised in Diamond City. I told Mayor Hancock, and he said I should check with you.”

“Not Nora?” Saying the name makes her tongue sticky and gross, but saying Nora’s nickname just might make her throw up. Better to go clinical. Objective. This way, this way… this way, Piper doesn’t feel like she should have known.

The ex-secretary twists her hands together, overlapping fingers worn red by stress. “She’s been avoiding the agency and me every time she goes to the markets. She—“ Ellie hesitates, like she’s about to say sacrilege, but she pushes forward. “She looked at me once, dead-on stare, and that was the morning after I drank myself half to sleep so I had a hell of a hangover, and—and she looked guilty.” Hastily, she adds, “Not like she pulled the trigger, though! More like she could have seen Nick die and felt too guilty to tell me.”

Piper takes off her cap and stares at the dilapidated walls of her home, and her thoughts are numb. _Congratulations_ , _Piper Wright, you’ve created a living legend no one wants to challenge, even when said legend is absent_. What happened to the days where everyone thought Piper was just another nosey rumormonger?

Nat butts into the conversation. “Piper’ll figure out who did it,” her little sister says with utmost confidence. “There’s not too many people in the Commonwealth who can fool my sister for long.”

III.

Ellie’s given her the key to Valentine’s agency. Piper fumbles with the jagged metal, mostly because she’s fixated to the iconic advertising sign, dead. The red looks like dried blood when neon isn’t glowing through it, and dew collects on the letters.

Inside of the agency are the smells of dust and oil and smoke, all of which can be attributed to a (missing) synth detective with a penchant for needlessly smoking and a bachelor habit of not dusting. Piper’s not working with a perfectly intact crime scene, but she’s got an imagination.

In cases like these, an imagination’s the best thing you got. Especially when you’re flying by the seat of your pants.

Piper takes a seat in a dead man’s chair, slouching against the back of it like she imagines Nick must’ve done, his tendency to adopt human mannerisms always so prominent in a client’s mind after an appointment.

She once interviewed a client of Nick’s, one of his successful cases. Piper likes getting different perspectives, and Nick’s clientele were always eager to relay their reviews (mostly good, some bad, a couple bigoted). Since Piper liked Nick, she did him the favor of boosting his reputation by means of her interviewee’s words. Put this in the paper, right under the title ‘DETECTIVE SAVES THE DAY AGAIN’:

_Valentine knows he’s a synth, and he doesn’t even bother tryin’ to hide it, but sometimes—sometimes he just goes an’ does something_ human _. Rubs his hands like he’s tryin’ to warm ‘em, lights a cigarette and cups the lit end with his palm… he even shoves ‘em in his pockets ‘cause he doesn’t know what else to do with ‘em. Funny synth, that Valentine. Great detective._

And now, Piper pretends she is Nick. Nick, who pores over cases like a thirsty man sifts through damp dirt for water. Nick, who probably recognizes familiar treads and doesn’t bother reacting until they collapse in the chair before his desk, complaining about their busy life.

_Set the scene, Piper_.

Late in the day—has to be, since Ellie hadn’t seen him since she left that afternoon for the Dugout. Midnight, why the hell not? It’s as good of a scene setter as any.

Midnight. The electric lights buzz, the radio muted because Travis puts on the worst songs at the worst times of night. And then, a visitor. Someone he knows, or someone he fears, because there’s no sign of a scuffle.

_Hypothesis: Nora._

Nora comes in, stands in front of Nick. Does she hold him at gunpoint and walk him out all the way to the forgotten alleys between Diamond City and Goodneighbor? Do they hold a quiet discussion on where to hold a showdown, far away from any innocent bystanders?

Who else can get Nick to abandon his post at Diamond City, now that’s a good question. It’s why Piper jumps to the conclusion that it’s _Nora_.

If so, what can Piper Wright do against the Commonwealth’s new heroine? The heroine she built up from nothing but hearsay and gratitude?

Dear God, she can imagine the charges: slander, libel, paranoid cynic, backstabber…

Piper smells the faint remnants of nicotine, and whatever steel is in her strengthens. “Okay,” she says aloud, almost resignedly. Very few pursue Nora as an enemy, and what Piper wants to go beyond that—she wants to tear down her image and expose her. “Okay. Let’s do this shit, Wright.”

IV.

She starts from the humble beginnings of Nora No-Last-Name, which begins all the way at Sanctuary. The first Minutemen settlement shelters over thirty people and four budding families, all with kids on the way. From its beginnings as an apocalyptic suburban idyll, Sanctuary now exists as a respectable trading hub and residential area almost on par with Bunker Hill.

Piper pats Nat on the head and leaves her in Ellie’s capable hands before embarking on the brisk walk. The Minutemen patrol the roads, but they lack the forces of their previous years. Piper is a recognizable figure in her red coat, paperboy cap, and sharp smile, but she is also a crackshot.

Inside Sanctuary, Preston Garvey patrols. They’ve met a few times—it’s hard for any of Nora’s contacts _not_ to chat at least once in passing. Garvey’s a good man, prone to a little self-deprecation and moroseness, but overall decent.

He’s also notoriously hard to catch alone; Preston knows how to slip away faster than a radscorpion when he has to face an unpleasant situation.

“Hey, Preston,” she says, lengthening her stride to match his. He’s walking the perimeter of the walls, laser musket a crank away from being at full power.

“Piper.”

She can’t give the game away. Nora _is_ Preston’s savior and General. “You, uh, hear from Blue lately?”

Preston makes the most curious scowl for such a good-natured man. His scar pulls down with his disapproving frown, and his lips thin into a flat line. “No, I haven’t.”

“What, she finally refused to report in and be the charitable soul?” Piper half-jokes.

“Yes,” says Garvey sincerely. He doesn’t falter in his footsteps after this admission, and Piper admires him for that—for finding strength after losing faith in yet another idol. “She’s… changed.” His frown goes away, replaced by a sheepish expression. “We’ve had a falling out over the settlers.”

“Really?” Because she’s not a jackass, she keeps her voice lowered, calm, and not incredulous.

He huffs a wry laugh. “Yeah. It’s about the ghouls. Nora says not to admit any ghouls into the settlements. Says that they don’t need the kind of support humans do, which is a load of bull _shit_. She also told me to immediately execute anyone showing any signs of being a synth.”

If Garvey looked as offended then as he does now, Piper should probably add to her description of him the phrase ‘bleeding heart’. Even she’s a little wary of the Commonwealth’s boogeyman.

She tries a light-hearted tone. “Sounds a little Brotherhood of Steel to me.”

Preston finally stops walking and mulls over her words. “Huh. It does, doesn’t it? Nora said she was thinking of trying out for the hell of it, but I didn’t think she was serious.”

V.

From Diamond City to Sanctuary to the Castle, Piper wanders. Nora, renowned folk hero up and down the Commonwealth, is disinclined to walk a straight path settlement to settlement. The programmed locations in her Pip-Boy, locations gifted by trading caravans or grateful settlers, allow Nora and her chosen companion of the time to take the road less traveled.

Piper, _not_ equipped with a Pip-Boy, makes do with muttered curses and hasty interrogations of the caravan drivers. The drivers accept her excuse and identity as the Commonwealth’s frazzled biographer, and they let her take supplies and directions whenever they can afford it.

It’s a goose chase, looking for traces of Nora, so she goes back to Sanctuary.

Garvey recommends the path to Croup Manor as a starter; he’d reported to Nora several weeks before that the Manor was infested with ghouls, and she and that Paladin Danse went without further comment. Only four days later, Garvey received a note: ‘Done and done. Manor is a bit intimidating, and slightly irradiated. Send ghouls here.’

(In a ballsy move, Garvey ignored the order and asked for any ghoul vagabonds to settle in Sanctuary instead. No one in Sanctuary, not even the original settlers, appear bothered or disturbed about working next to a ghoul. The motto goes, ‘If they can work hard and live honest, we’ve no quarrel.’)

So Piper heads for the manor, plodding along a cracked asphalt road to a house most definitely trapped for any lost ghouls. Hands shoved in her coat’s pockets, scarf pulled up to the tip of her reddened nose—Piper makes for a very attractive target to rob. In fact, she feels not unlike Red Riding Hood.

Nora and her Paladin Danse being, of course, some amalgamated form of the Big Bad Wolf.

She sees the decomposing structure of the manor in the distance but does not hurry her stride. Either they will be there, or she has come to put up signs warning any aspiring settlers away.

The local wildlife is silent. A draft seems to blow right through Piper, even with the three layers of clothes and leather.

“Halt!” says an imperious, imposing voice. Disinclined to be stopped and shot, Piper keeps walking. “Citizen, halt or I _will_ shoot!”

Piper rolls her eyes and bothers to listen this time, pulling down her scarf to rest at her neck. “I literally,” she responds, “have nothing of value on me but a tape of my little sister making fun of my coat. And it’s not even a good recording, so even if you loot my corpse for it, I can guarantee you will be _supremely_ disappointed.”

An awkward silence, and Piper hears a choked off laugh.

Out of the surrounding woods, Nora emerges. There’s a large smile on her face, almost ecstatic. “Piper Wright!” She turns her head and motions with her hand; a great mechanical menace reluctantly steps in place behind her. “This is Paladin Danse.”

“Looks almost like the Minuteman statue if you tilt your head right,” jokes Piper. “What are you two lurking in the woods for?”

“I could ask the same of you,” answers Nora, and she ambles on over, the Paladin clunking after her. “You, girl, are a _long_ way from home. Is Nat okay?”

She could pretend like nothing’s wrong, like Nick isn’t weeks gone and Ellie isn’t still stopping at random points in Diamond City to catch her breath. So she does. “Yeah, yeah. Ellie’s looking after her—you remember Ellie? She’s—”

“I remember her.” Nora’s grin turns fixed. “She’s doing well in Diamond City? I heard that she used to be from Goodneighbor.”

“We,” interrupts the Paladin rather brusquely, “are out in the open. Can the reunion wait until we reach a secured area?”

Piper studies the helmeted hulk and finds that the lenses are mirrored. “Bit of a party pooper, isn’t he?”

Nora shrugs. “He’s right, as it is. Where are you headed? The two of us can escort you over there, no charge.” She winks. “Not like MacCready, huh?”

Piper’s met MacCready on a chance encounter at the noodle stand. It was a very short encounter.

“Nah, I was just out on a walk. A long walk. I should really start heading back to Diamond City, if your escorting jurisdiction stretches that far.”

Unbidden, Nora goes into a deep bow and that is when Piper Wright remembers that just about anyone who traveled consistently with Nora for even a _week_ became smitten. Her included. “For good friends, I’ll go anywhere,” Nora assures Piper, and the Paladin snorts as her back straightens. “Even you, Paladin! The Elder doesn’t need us _immediately_ , so we’ve got time.”

Nora hooks her arm around Piper, a warm hand clasping the bicep farthest from her, and Piper finds herself walking the opposite way from Croup Manor. “Got any new stories, muckraker?”

“Just a few…” Piper says, feeling the intense whiplash of conflicting emotions. “I’ve thought about trying my hand at fiction, you know.”

“Cool. If you get Nat to do the art for it, we can get new comic books…”

VI.

They escort her all the way to the outskirts of Diamond City, and suddenly Nora stops in her tracks—as head of the pack, when she stops, Piper and Paladin Danse stop.

They’ve paused in front of the old library, the locked-up one where she and Nick cleaned house ages and ages ago. Piper squints up at the white walls, the shattered windows, and then she sidles a glance at Nora. Nora, whose face is as still and grave as stone.

Piper’s stomach drops. It’d been a good few days, catching up with Nora. Almost idyllic, even with the Paladin sulking in his metal suit behind them. She had forgotten what her goal was, so caught up in Nora’s charismatic and too-big-for-life personality. But that’s Nora for you. She’s better at turning conversations around than anyone Piper’s met.

“Any good books in there, do you think?” Piper asks, just to break the silence.

“No,” answers Nora. “What wasn’t digitized was used for kindling. It’s just a building now.” She shakes herself and turns to Piper. “Can you handle your way from here?”

“Can’t spare some time for a meal at the noodle bar? My treat.”

Her laugh hurts Piper, because it’s _sincere_. Nora really _is_ sorry about leaving Piper to find her way back home. “No, no, I’m sorry. Just remembered that Danse and I do have a task to complete. For Preston, you know. He’s enthusiastic about keeping the Commonwealth safe.”

“Most people with that big of a heart are,” agrees Piper. “I’ll see you later?”

“Hopefully. Bye, Piper.”

“See you later, Blue.” She shuffles her feet and forces herself to stare up at Danse, who’s removed his helmet out of health—the sun’s actually shining today. Nora had taken off her jacket, baring some pretty glorious biceps, and failed to get Piper or the Paladin to do the same. “Paladin.”

“Citizen. Stay safe.”

Piper grins. “I try.”

VII.

“I’m home,” she says and is immediately bowled over by Nat.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Nat complains, “do you have any idea what I’ve been through in the past three weeks?” She clings to Piper’s neck with her little octopus arms, and the wool of her sweater scratches. “Ellie’s forced me to eat _gourds_ , Pipes. Gourds!”

“Holy cripes,” Piper gasps. “ _Nutrition_? In _you_?”

From her sprawled out position on the floor, she sees Ellie’s sock-clad feet approach a bit closer. “She’s kidding. She likes gourds better than carrots.” Piper shoves Nat off her and kicks the door shut with a foot; she takes Ellie’s extended hand. “Successful outing?”

“I didn’t get anything substantial for Diamond City to believe in,” says Piper. “Give me another week, I need to check something out.”

Ellie’s smile, worn and tired, follows Piper’s promise. “You don’t have to do this.”

Shrugging helplessly, Piper replies, “Don’t say that just yet.”

Dinner is radstag stew, tatoes and gourds included. Sleep is actually done on a real bed—Ellie’s hauled both beds over to the Wrights’ abode, citing that the agency is too empty with Nick gone. And morning? Morning has Piper leaving home early to visit the library, cap tugged low and scarf wrapped tight to ward off the chill.

VII.

“Holy _shit_ , Nick.”

VIII.

Nick Valentine is dead. Now all Piper has to do is put the words in her terminal. ‘Nick Valentine, dead. Years of civil service, free of charge. Treated like crap by his home.’ She can do this. She’s had to write obituaries in the past for people she’d known. Hell, Piper’s manufactured a couple praiseworthy eulogies for people she _hadn’t_ known. She practically has a _template_ for occurrences like these.

Piper sits in front of her terminal. The green marker blinks intermittently, waiting for input on a black, empty screen.

Nick Valentine is dead. His shell sits in the library, surrounded by an artful array of traps Piper’s disarmed and rearmed when she left.

_No proof_ , she reminds herself shakily. No proof that Nora has killed Nick. There’s a difference between an exposé and a sensationalized, slanderous article. Except Nick Valentine is dead, and Nora is dashing about the Commonwealth with a new tin man.

 Piper pushes herself away from the terminal and leaves the house, heading for the Dugout Inn with a hollow stomach. When she hears Ellie is actually back in her hometown, Piper buys a bottle of whiskey from Vadim, leaves Diamond City for Goodneighbor, and finds Ellie watching Magnolia croon a sad song.

“Hey.” Piper lifts up the unopened bottle. “We’re gonna need this.”

They go in the backroom and drink until Whitechapel Charlie calls for Hancock, explaining that two chavs are wrecking the VIP room. Hancock takes two glances to assess them and sighs.

“Alright, Charlie, I’ll take ‘em out. Know why they’re here?”

Ellie raises a delicate finger. “Jus’, jus’ mourning, sir.”

“Nick Valentine,” Piper tastes the words again, slow and bitter, “is dead.”

Hancock stops trying to wrangle Ellie over his shoulder and stares at Piper. “Dead? That old bastard?” She nods, and he hisses out a breathy curse. “Charlie, we’ll take the room for the night. Keep the drinks coming, any kind.”

After a gut-wrenching hangover in the morning, Piper goes back home and doesn’t leave for her stories as much. Ellie, true to her drunken promise, stays with the Wright sisters and provides a cornerstone they hadn’t known they’d needed.

IX.

A month passes in this fashion. Nat goes to school on a regular basis, learning math in addition to her excellent reading, writing, and speech skills. She punches boys who say they hate her big sister but like the way Nat acts, and she punches girls who comment on her big sister’s early life crisis and praise the way Nat’s headed. These incidents are far and few, but there nonetheless.

Piper and Ellie take up Nick’s role as the jack-of-all-trades in Diamond City, though they resolutely stay away from any trips requiring them to travel far. Piper does the legwork, Ellie handles the clients—this, they established early on. Apparently, Nick charmed clients where Piper abrasively dresses them down.

Publick Occurrences becomes a thing of the past, and Piper is reintegrated back into the normal gossip of society. Enthusiastically so, once Piper rips down the letters off the top of her garage, which is renovated into a junkyard.

“Ah, girl, we were waiting for you to come to your senses! Some things should stay quiet, eh?” Vadim passes her a shot of diluted vodka. “What good is bringing out nasty secrets? More bad than good your paper did.”

Piper politely smiles and switches the shot for a glass of water.

No one in Diamond City is truly aware of Nick’s fate, but they ascribe his disappearance to a variety of events. A bad run-in with raiders. The Institute finally reclaiming their lost property. Piper’s disproportionately fond of ‘he found a dog and started heading west for the Mojave’.

She’s looking over a new file with Ellie nodding off on her shoulder. Classic lost property case, but the client seems adamant that it’s been stolen by his good-for-nothing cousin. Bing Crosby encourages her in the background, the Andrews Sisters echo his words. In the distance, Piper hears the gates open.

Then, Travis’s voice (steady and confident and alarmingly smooth since Nora got him to man up) shakily interrupts the song with a PSA.

“ _G-Goodneighbor’s been—been ambushed_ ,” Travis says. “ _The Silver Shroud radio channel has gone to s-static, and Diamond City’s receiving an influx of refugees who fled the scene. They—they’re blaming the B-Brotherhood of Steel. More—more tomorrow, at ten in the morning.”_

Ellie is stiff against Piper’s shoulder, but her breaths come fast and harsh.

“… Do you have friends there?”

“No, but—but they hadn’t done anything,” whispers Ellie. “They weren’t doing anything wrong.”

She closes the file, turns off the light, and carefully ushers Ellie to bed.

Nat goes to school, blissfully unaware yet of what’s happened. Piper and Ellie get to work reviewing case files, but they are too tense to focus on anything but the radio. At precisely ten o’clock, a recomposed Travis lets “Uranium Fever” fade out and begins his report.

No, not a report, Piper realizes within seconds. The man’s doing an interview.

_“… here’s a survivor of the attack. Fred, was it?”_

“ _Yeah_.” The new voice is shrill with barely contained terror, and it sounds weepy. A little hazed, too, which poses a risk—listeners with keen ears might take the dazed behavior one of several ways: a) the man was a chem addict, b) the man was an alcoholic, or c) the man was in trauma. “ _I saw it all. They, they ran down the Memory Den first, and then I saw a woman storm in the town hall with this huge dude decked out in power armor, and when she came out, they detonated something and the town hall was in ruins!_ ”

A huge dude decked out in power armor, partnered with a woman. Piper silently urges for Fred to elaborate more on the woman; luckily, Travis does too.

“ _Can you describe her?_ ”

“ _Yeah. She—she helped me with a little problem, she and that old synth partner of hers_ —”

Piper lurches to her feet. She staggers outside to the newly-installed garden to throw up what she ate for breakfast, the taste sour and biting in her mouth, but she cannot purge herself of the stirring revulsion. A glass is passed into her hand, and Piper blindly rinses out her mouth with metal-tasting water.

She focuses on shoveling dirt over the sick than looking at Ellie, but the task is short.

“Piper—”

“Yeah,” she croaks. “I know. I know what I gotta do.”

X.

Piper makes Ellie and Nat stay at the Dugout Inn, and then she sits at her terminal and finishes her last article, both an overdue obituary for Nick and a callout to the perpetrator of the Goodneighbor Ambush. She delivers the papers herself to every door, leaves a large stack of them outside her house for anyone to take. They’re gone by the next day, and Piper replaces it with an equally large pile.

It doesn’t take long for the news to circulate—Diamond City is the hub of Commonwealth, and the article will keep the gossip and rumors about the Brotherhood of Steel for a very long time, even after (especially after) she dies.

Of course, no one appreciates Piper being a shitty hypocrite, but they can’t deny the evidence—Diamond City’s absent synth detective only ran with one gal in his entire career, and that gal was the Vaultie with the pre-war looks and mannerisms.

And then Piper waits for the retribution.

It doesn’t take long. Less than a week.

“The article wasn’t very nice of you,” says Nora. She’s let herself in on cat-like feet; Commonwealth’s rubbing off on her. She used to knock and ask permission to enter. Piper turns in her seat to face the woman, who has a wide scar cutting deep up her lovely cheekbones, a heavy jacket over her shoulders.

A pipe revolver raised at eye-level.

“Sorry, I don’t pander to racist assholes,” snarks Piper. Fred was very specific on who, exactly, was targeted in Goodneighbor. Ghouls, and ghoul sympathizers. Fred was, emphatically, not a ghoul sympathizer. “How many innocents died at your hand after Nick?”

Nora squints at Piper, like she is a particularly insignificant, if clingy, piece of gum stuck on her shoe’s sole. “I don’t kill innocents, you know that,” she says, reproachful. Her guiltless eyes settle on Piper’s. “Moralistic journalists don’t automatically fall into that category, sorry.”

She’s not confident about her chances of outgunning Nora, even without the missing steel giant. Piper’s great at surviving long-term things, like starvation and poverty. Luck’s brought her through the split-second dangers, like the poisoned drink at the Dugout Inn or the Children of Atom disaster at Bunker Hill.

Nick was suited to this though, the stand-offs. He always got the last word.

“I’ve said nothing that wasn’t true,” Piper retorts.

“You’ve accused me of being a racist bigot, murderer of Nick Valentine,” Nora mildly returns. “The first is slander, the second is a lie. Nick Valentine died centuries ago. What was left was nothing but a simulacrum.”

Abruptly, Piper stands. Her chair falls down, her fists clench tight at her sides. No, she’s not going to able to make a lasting mark on Nora’s conscience. She was naïve to even think she could guilt Nora. “Blue.”

“Piper.”

“You can’t touch this city after I die.”

“No, I can’t,” Nora confirms. “Diamond City is known to be rather selective in who lives inside its walls, and its measures fall in line with the Brotherhood’s. Unfortunately for you, you've stepped out of them.” She thumbs down the hammer, and Piper reflexively takes a step back, bumping into her desk as she does. “Come on, Piper,” the woman scolds, “you prepared for this, didn’t you? You waited for me to come into your home and everything.”

Her voice turns kind. Gentle. It turns Nora into the woman Piper had nurtured a crush for ever since the woman humored her wish to track down Nick Valentine long ago. “Just close your eyes.” Piper does. “The last thing you’ll hear is a very loud bang.”

???

(Nora lied. The very last thing Piper hears is how hard her heart thuds against her sternum, how fast her breath quickens and stutters, and very distantly, the crack of a revolver—)

 

**Author's Note:**

> You've made it to the end! Congratulations!
> 
> *I honestly did not expect to start hinting at Piper/Ellie. Readers can choose whether to see it as shippy or not.  
> **I don't think the Nora I've created here would have accepted an apology. The attack on Nora's reputation was too traitorous to accept.  
> ***Up next, an interlude before the next installment of Sentinel Nora wrecking shit: Hancock, and the Goodneighbor Ambush


End file.
